Saturday we allowed family members of the children to visit as we no longer allow children to visit “safe” families during Christmas or Easter holidays. The parents are not happy but it is much less of a problem. The teenage girls from Fayetteville helped entertain the children who had no one come to see them.

The teenage boys from Fayetteville dug the trench & began laying the drains for the hospital.

I was a special education/psychology major in college and I remember a class where when the students entered the classroom the board was absolutely clean–pure white! The professor approached the board and made a dark black dot in the middle. He asked the students “What do you see?” and each answered “A black dot”. Three times he asked the question before telling the class how wrong they were.

“You concentrated so much on that one small black dot that you missed the entire picture of the pure whiteness that covered the board from top to bottom and side to side.

It has taken many years but I have seen the white board more than the black dots in my life. The black dots are the heartaches, disappointments, discouragements, trials, diseases, pains and so forth. Paul said that he ran his race with perseverance. I have run my race also with much stumbling, fumbling, slipping and sliding. I have dropped the baton and sometimes run outside my lane. I have walked part of my race rather then run. There have been many black dots throughtout the race.

But through out all my disappointments, failures, lack of faith, weariness and unmet expectations God has remained faithful. The white has been so much brighter and larger than thse black spots of my race.

It all depends on what you see when you look at the big picture of your life!!